


Sixty Words Per Minute

by CiderSky



Category: Fury (2014)
Genre: 60-WPM, Gen, Norman Feels, Norman isn't dealing well, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, War is hell, World War II, but he is an office clerk, i just made myself sad, the boys were a month away from the end of the war
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-19
Updated: 2014-11-19
Packaged: 2018-02-26 05:26:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2639768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CiderSky/pseuds/CiderSky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Norman isn’t dealing well after the battle at the crossroads.</p><p>or,</p><p>Norman is trained as a type-clerk and could write 60-words per minute.</p><p>He writes four letters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sixty Words Per Minute

**Author's Note:**

> The biggest tragedy of this film, for me, was that Fury’s crew was no more than one-month from seeing the end of the war. We meet them in April 1945. The war ‘ended’ in Germany on May 7 1945. That breaks my heart.
> 
> Small fandom is small but I refuse to let this one go! I will keep writing darn it!

They bring him back to that run down little town, water him, feed him and give him their condolences.

“You were lucky to serve with those men.” A master sergeant says to him and means it. He looks just about as upset about the news as the rest of those who have been around for a good, long while.

He doesn’t say anything about that; instead he asks what they were going to do with the bodies. It’s morbid and the question catches in his throat but he can’t stand the thought of them ending up in the meat wagon.

“Son, we take care of our own.” Norman doesn’t know exactly what it means but he turns away; he feels guilty for being glad that he wasn’t there to see.

His hands come up to cradle his head and he begins to sob, his body unable to hold that much grief; when he finally looks up the master sergeant is gone.

* * *

He’s tried to sleep, though he could hardly call it that. All night, every night, he is kept up by visions of his former team.

He sees Grady and that horrendous hole in his abdomen; the one that bled him out so quickly their gunner, a man who sat a foot from him, couldn’t make it to him before he passed.

He sees Gordo fall back into the driver’s seat and drop that fucking grenade. He sees the man’s eyes when he realized what had happened, sees his last heroic act; he’d heard of men sacrificing themselves like that but he had never imagined anyone would do it for him.

There’s a lull; Boyd jumps out of the tank and Norman follows, they both make it back alive, somehow, and Norman feels relieved, not ready to lose someone else. The relief lasts a mere second because suddenly Boyd’s knees buckle and there’s a hole in his head, shot right through the eye. In that moment he’s real angry with God, though he bets it was a thing of kindness. The man didn’t feel a thing.

And finally, Wardaddy. He too collapses back into Fury, manages to close the hatch. In his nightmare he’s talking to him but he can’t hear what he’s saying. He just sees all that blood, sees the life draining from the man’s body and then that grenade. He tries to stay, realizes he wants to die with him, but something pushes him forward and Don leaves his sight in a surreal, telescopic way; just like looking through a scope. Then he’s in the dirt, hands up like a coward and he hates himself.

He can’t help but think he should have just died with them. 

* * *

 

Fury’s crew has been the talk of the whole battalion for the past three days; Norman can’t go anywhere – and he doesn’t go very far at all, anyway – without hearing one of their names.

_Knew the loader since basic. Called him Coon-Ass. Weren’t many tougher than that son’bitch._

_That preacher kid, Boyd Swan. Now that was a good man; what a fucking waste._

_Wardaddy? Never thought I’d see the day. We’re all good as dead, then._

_Gordo, man. He was just a good kind of guy to be around. Funny as all hell._

_Only one survived. The kid. Had been with them 24-hours. Jesus._

He hates it. Each time he hears one of their names or mention of the ‘battle at the crossroads’, as they were calling it, he is caught between the sick sensation of wanting to wring someone’s neck and throwing up.

They all look at him with something behind their eyes; pity, disgust, interest, disbelief. And yet he walks amongst them like a ghost.

_Fury’s crew has been goin’ three years. Three. A green kid got ‘em all killed in a day._

_Coon Ass wasn't the smartest of the bunch; surprised he didn't get himself killed months ago._

_Yeah, their driver was drunk every second of the day. Traded enough with him to know. Whole crew was a mess, man._

_Sargent Collier was reckless. Was a matter of time … everyone knew he wouldn’t see the end of this._

_Pastor Swan? So much for divine protection. Ain’t no one safe, best believe that._

Eventually he does lash out, punches some asshole in the face but he’s younger, smaller, and the man punches right back. Gives him two black eyes. Eventually, someone, a captain, pulls them apart and gives the other man a citation, revokes his 12-hour pass.

He doesn’t give him one, doesn’t punish him and Norman learns he hates pity more than what the asshole did to him.

* * *

 

He does sleep that night but wakes up sobbing.

“I killed them. I killed them –“ He wakes to his own wavering voice, and his muscles are tense, curled as tightly as he is in a fetal position. His throat is constricting so painfully he can’t swallow. He lies there drooling into the wool blanket, arms wrapped around himself.

No one says anything. He’s not the only one who wakes up like that. 

* * *

 

He’s learning a lot about time. More specifically he is learning about how time moves in war. It doesn’t move like it does anywhere else.

He knows he wasn’t with Fury’s crew long but hours stretch on like days. Bonds are formed in baptism by fire and blood. It all happens quickly, and it did, undoubtedly, for him.

Each loss hurts in a way he knows doesn’t make a lot of sense on paper. Back home people would say that he’d get over it, that he hadn’t known them long enough to suffer so badly.

No one says anything like that here. Everyone knows what its like, how it is. In fact, its so common, no one says anything to him at all.

* * *

 

It’s day four and they haven’t assigned him to a new crew. Secretly he’s grateful, but wonders why all the same.

He narrows it down to two things; they have no idea what the hell to do with him or they don’t trust putting him in a tank again. There are still words flying left and right about him being Fury’s curse, him being the thing that finally brought down the longest running tank crew.

He doesn’t blame them, even though it hurts, because he thinks it might be true.

So, they use him as a floater. Coon-Ass had told him the Army didn’t make mistakes and he has to believe it. He does job after job but at the end of the day he always makes sure he’s near a Sherman. It’s the only place that feels like home. 

* * *

 

He’s sleeping under a Sherman – though he doesn’t even remember crawling under the thing – and someone hauls him out from under it, smacks him up the side of his head.

“The hell you doin’ boy? Wanna get runned over?” Norman shakes his head and says ‘no, sir, sorry, sir.’

He had spent three nights like that under Fury, squashed between four other men, and it had been the safest he felt the entire time. The man scowls at him but then something in his eyes catch; he recognizes him, maybe.

He doesn’t say anything, though, and after a long moment the man releases the front of his jacket and pushes him a way, calls him a goddamn idiot.

* * *

 

_They haunt him._

* * *

 

He sees a man on horseback and after that, whenever he dreams, which is always in too short snatches of time, he hears Gordo telling him about fields of rotting flesh, so sprawling and definite that you can’t take a step without standing on something dead.

* * *

 

There’s a guy in F Company that could be Grady’s brother; he stops and stares at him the first time he sees him and the man asks him what the fuck he’s looking at. He avoids F Company, when he can, after that. 

* * *

 

He’s in the back of a jeep travelling to wherever and he looks to his right. He swears Don Collier is staring back at him. He’s so certain he stands, pushes a man aside, and shouts as another truck gets in his way, breaks his contact with Don.

“Sergeant –“ He shouts and the other men look at him strangely; his voice cracks and he’s about to jump off the vehicle.

When the truck passes Collier is gone.

Someone yanks him down, tells him, in a gentle voice, that whatever he’s seeing isn’t there. 

* * *

 

He’s moving crates of ammo when a small troop of men comes rolling in; they have wounded with them and, of course, deceased.

Norman keeps his head down.

“Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name –“ A man speaks over the dead and it sounds exactly like Bible.

He starts hyperventilating, holds on to those ammo tins even tighter and murmurs to himself; hear am I, send me … hear am I, send me.

He doesn’t know why, but it helps.

* * *

 

Some boys bring in a group of POWs and Norman watches numb as they cross the camp.

“They’re from that battalion,” he hears someone say behind him, “the one from the battle at the crossroads.”

‘Shit.” Another man says; Norman’s heart begins to race.

“They’ll just take ‘em out back and kill ‘em. Ain’t got anywhere to put POWs now –“

Norman goes kind of deaf at that moment and his vision blacks out in spots. He’s standing, suddenly, knows he must look calm on the outside because no one says anything and no one stops him even though he has murder in his heart.

He advances on the group and he hears a shrill shout – he realizes it’s him. He’s screaming. He’s making sounds he’s never heard out of himself. It’s not like the way he shouted and whooped back home, when getting to horseplay with friends. It’s not like the way he shouted, on occasion, at his younger brothers.

It’s animalistic and raw and it hurts his throat, is bringing tears to his eyes.

The only hit he gets in is the first; he bashes a young soldier in the face with a can of peas. He’d been holding it, had been trying to will himself to open it and eat something, and now he was trying to beat a man’s head in with it.

They pick him off before he gets anywhere, before he can cave the fucker’s head in; the man only gets a scrape out of the whole ordeal but he’s blithering in the mud, terrified.

They pull him away and at some point he stops making noise. Someone’s talking to him, slapping the side of his head. He hardy feels human.

* * *

Norman sits on the back of a jeep while they make a crossing and watches as they pass a hundred German POWs.

The man next to him slings his arm around his shoulder and he flinches, though the man can’t tell through the jostled movements of the truck; the man is all smiles.

“Word is we’re near the end. War won’t even last another month.” The other boys cheer and laugh.

Norman wonders if they were this close to the end, would it have mattered if they had run? He remembers what Don had said, remembers him saying it would end soon.

Before that, he had told him, a lot more people had to die. He wonders if Don knew his crew would be amongst them. Has a feeling he did.

He sits there, numb.

* * *

How is he supposed to move on? He wonders this in every moment. He knows the answer in a bland, logical way. He knows you moved on or died and that dying wasn’t an option.

But that doesn’t answer the how of the question.

Sargent Collier and his crew had taught him a lot about what to expect, about killing and the incredible horrors man were capable of, about how that was just normal for now. It was no joke that he’d grown more in his time with them than he had in measured years.

However, they hadn’t been able to teach him about how you survived that and what came after. They hadn’t been able to impart on him coping mechanisms and ways of staying. They hadn’t the time.

* * *

 

The battalion meets up with a bunch of airborne boys in a small German town and Norman experiences a side of this war that he didn’t really know existed. The battalion sets up outlook posts, gets things in order and then hunkers down. It’s not like Emma’s town – he can’t remember the town’s name and that hurts – where they came and went. They seemed to be setting up base, creating more permanent installations, as they got closer to Berlin.

Now that things are quiet – and it hurt his entire being to say that, to know that Fury’s crew just had to make it a little further to see quiet – the Army sees fit to make proper use of him.

He’s told to report to a rather impressive looking building and is led up an elaborate staircase and into an equally impressive bureau.

He salutes the man behind the desk. He’s a tall, blonde man in his thirties, most likely, though it was hard to say. He’d found out only two days ago that Sergeant Collier had been twenty-nine, Gordo and Coon-Ass twenty-seven and Boyd, well, he’d been twenty-five. Everyone, Norman came to realize, looks older in the Army.

Except him; he is painfully young looking. Everyone calls him kid, asks if he was a runaway and what the hell he was running from. He figures he just hasn’t seen enough of war, not that he wants to.

“Private Ellison.” The man says, giving him a nod; he looks fatigued but has a mountain of papers before him. “At ease.”

Norman listens and stands there, at a loss. He knows the man holds his future and it makes his gut churn in anxiety; suddenly, he sees the faces of his dead crew, and thinks, I can’t do this again.

The man doesn’t seem to notice his inner struggle and folds his hands.

“First, I would like to express my deepest sympathies for the loss of your crew. They were remarkable men and I was lucky enough to have made acquaintance each of them. They served their country well.”

“Sir.” Norman says because he must. He feels nothing. He’s been hearing the same thing for days from various higher ups and it did nothing to make their deaths seem justifiable.

The man cuts to the chase. Just goes on and says it.

“We will be assigning you to a new tank crew.” Norman can’t hide the surprise on his features and the man notices.

“I –“ He doesn’t know what he means to say, knows that his faltered speech isn’t befitting of a military man, but he can’t help himself.

“You may have only been with Sergeant Collier for a short time but trust me, son, in this war that makes you pretty damn qualified.” Norman nods stiffly, agrees. The man hands him a think, half crumpled piece of paper. Norman grabs it but doesn’t look.

“Report to your new commander this evening – “ The man doesn’t give him a time or a place; he’s smart enough to know that any sane man is taking this time of respite to recoup, by whatever their means be, and that he’ll likely just have to search him out.

“Yes, sir.” He feels numb. He tries to let it sink in that it won’t be Gordo next to him and Bible and Grady behind him; Sergeant Collier in his ear.

“Additionally, you will be receiving a silver star for your heroic efforts against the enemy.” The man’s tone doesn’t change; it’s all very formal and there’s little to feel proud or excited about. Enlisted men knew just how little these medals meant when men they cared for paid the price.

“My crew?” Norman chokes; he really doesn’t give two shits about his silver star.

“Purple Hearts. Medals of Honor. We don’t take what those boys did lightly.” The man’s voice drops into something extremely serious and for the first time Norman feels as though someone gets it.

“What about their families, sir?” The man’s hands briefly brush a stack of papers and Norman doesn’t miss it when he glances down at them, his gaze thoughtful and telling.

“Telegrams have already been sent,” Norman nods but his attention is on those papers; he wants to know what they say, “after that we write letters.”

“I want to write the letters.” Norman blurts out, stepping forward, eyes set on those papers; he needed to know what they said. It burned at him, set him on fire. He had had a family for a painfully brief amount of time and had known next to nothing about them

The thought made everything hurt and he just wanted those damn papers.

“I’m sorry, son. That has to be done by a high ranking official, or a Clergyman.” Norman’s shoulders droop and the air leaves his lungs.

“I have to – “ And there goes his voice again, all the strength leaving it and he wonders when he’ll stop being so damn weepy; but then he remembers Bible who seemed in near constant grief. He realizes that maybe this is just how he is, now.

“I have to tell their families about what they did for me. They saved me.” The man looks at him.

Norman doesn’t know it yet – will come to know it, after the war – but many of those letters end up under the charge of secretaries who don’t know a lick about what’s going on in the battlefield.

He will think, for a good and long time, that the man had been feeling sympathetic, that he’d seen something in him that was worth this task.

The reality – one Norman wouldn’t really ever know – would be that the man had too many letters to write, half of them being allocated to some face behind a typewriter and he figured it couldn’t hurt the families anymore than the loss of their boys.

It’s what makes him sigh and say, “Are you sure you can handle it? Are you a good writer, son?”

“I was a clerk before Fury, sir.” Norman says, his heart thumping because he wants this so badly. He adds, “I wrote plenty.”

There’s a long pause. The man’s jaw muscles bunch and he leans back in his chair. Finally, he speaks.

“Keep it short.” Norman’s brow turns down into an angry line and he can feel that awful burn in his eyes, the one that’s been there for a while now. Before he can say – do – anything rash, the man’s face falls into something sympathetic.

“For the families. In my experience it is better for the families to keep it short.” The man pauses and looks down, briefly.

“God knows I could write a novel for each man I’ve lost.”

“Sir.” He says because it’s the most honest thing he’s heard since Fury. Its also the only thing he’s related to since.

“Get it done before you haul out. You can use the Private’s desk.” He points towards the desk in the room over, a typewriter sitting on top.

“Yes sir, thank you, sir.” His voice cracks and he salutes; if he stands there any longer he knows he will crack, already his eyes burn. He’s already composing in his head and the words pain him, need to be released.

The man hands him a thin stack of papers and Norman feels like he's been given something precious. He doesn't look at them, is afraid to.

“You are dismissed.” He turns on his heel and heads to the room with that sad, tired looking typewriter and collapses into the chair.

He's gotten what he's asked for and suddenly he feels like he can't move, his fingers shaking as they grasp those papers. He feels like he's made a mistake because who is he? The assistant-tank driver who had hardly known them ...

 _No,_ he thinks to himself. They'd carried him through horrific odds. He'd fought with them, watched them die.  _That is something._

He owes this to them.

He picks up the first paper, his throat clenching in sorrow, and begins to write.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you readers enjoyed! I know there's not a lot of us but its a joy writing and reading with you all :-)
> 
> Next update will be In Arms.


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